you could not help but pity them as they set you on stunned fire

I remember the Arabic numerals on the dashboards, 

aquarium green, like the paintbrush tips 

the watch-girls licked, licking the radium—

we were there above the Cyclotron, 

in the hills, the Rad Lab under us 

enclosed in its cyclone fence. The interiors 

of the cars were shaped like soft flanks, 

the cloth front seats plump as some mothers' 

laps. I remember the beauty of the night, 

the crisp weightless blackness, the air 

that rose up the slope straight from the sea, 

from Seal Rock—we slid slowly 

along each other. Berkeley, below, 

without my glasses, was like a bottom 

drawer of smeared light. The rape 

and murder of our classmate had happened in these hills, 

so the fragrance of the dirt, porous and mineral, 

—eucalyptus and redwood humus— 

that had buried her body, was there with sex, 

and one gleam down there was the doughnut shop 

where he had picked her up—as if the intimate 

pleasure of eating doughnuts, now, 

for all of us, were to bear his mark. 

And the easy touch of the four thousand volts, 

that was in the car with us 

with everything else—the rivets in boys' jeans, 

their soldered clothes, the way they carried 

the longing of the species, you could not help but pity them 

as they set you on stunned fire. I would almost 

pass out, my body made of some other 

substance, my eyes open in the green darkness 

of some other planet. And in some other 

car, on some other skirt of the mountain, 

a boy I secretly adored. I remember 

how it felt, eyes closed, kissing, 

streaming through the night, sealed in a capsule 

with the wrong person. But the place was right, 

mountains on my left hand, 

sea on my right, I felt someday I might find him, 

proton electron we would hit and stick and 

meanwhile there were the stars, and the careful not 

looking at or touching the boy's pants, 

and my glasses, wings folded, stuck 

in a pocket. I can hear the loud snap 

when we leaned on them and they broke, we drove down the 

hill, the porch-lamp blazed, I would enter 

below its blurred gem, it seemed 

endless then, the apprenticeship to the mortal. 

 

[Sharon Olds {1942- }, 'Necking' from The Wellspring: Poems]